Man hit by train, killed in Pickaway County

Friday

Jan 31, 2014 at 12:01 AMJan 31, 2014 at 9:12 PM

A man who was hit and killed while walking on a Pickaway County railroad track sometime overnight or early this morning was wearing earbuds and listening to music and likely didn't hear the approaching train, authorities said.

Holly Zachariah, The Columbus Dispatch

A man who was hit and killed while walking on a Pickaway County railroad track sometime overnight or early this morning was wearing earbuds and listening to music and likely didn’t hear the approaching train, authorities said.

A railroad employee alerted the authorities at 7:44 a.m. of a body on an adjacent track just north of Ashville, said Lt. Dale Parish of the Pickaway County sheriff’s office. It’s not yet clear at what time another train had actually hit 34-year-old David J. Bontrager, Parish said.

Parish said Bontrager was struck by a northbound train and that the workers on that train apparently never realized they had hit someone. It was the engineer of a southbound train who reported seeing someone.

Parish said Bontrager's parents had been searching for him.

Bontrager, who lives in the Somerset area in Perry County, had told his parents that he was heading to Texas for a job but that he had had car trouble in Circleville. They found the car alongside a road in Circleville last night and filed a missing persons report with the Circleville Police Department, Parish said.

Parish said the man may have been in Ashville with friends and then, because he was unfamiliar with the area, thought he was walking back toward Circleville when he was struck by the train.

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